Bruce was right - it has all been said before! Here's a short list of law review articles discussing the issue. Links are to Westlaw (subscription required).

Fred Rodell, Goodbye to Law Reviews, 23 Va. L. Rev. 38, 45 (1936) ("Maybe one of these days the law reviews, or some of them, will have the nerve to shoot for higher stakes.... Meanwhile I say they're spinach.").

John G. Kester, Faculty Participation in the Student-Edited Law Review, 36 J. Legal Educ. 14, 14 (1986).

Arthur D. Austin, The "Custom of Vetting" as a Substitute for Peer Review, 32 Ariz. L. Rev. 1 (1990) ("The use of student edited journals as the main outlet for legal writing is an embarrassing situation deserving the smirks of disdain it gets from colleagues in the sciences and humanities.").

Richard A. Epstein, Faculty-Edited Law Journals, 70 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 87 (1994).

Randy E. Barnett, Beyond the Moot Law Review: A Short Story with a Happy Ending, 70 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 123 (1994).

James Lindgren, An Author's Manifesto, 61 U. Chi. L. Rev. 527 (1994) ("Our scholarly journals are in the hands of incompetents.").

Wendy J. Gordon, Counter-Manifesto: Student-Edited Reviews and the Intellectual Properties of Scholarship, 61 U. Chi. L. Rev. 541 (1994).

Richard A. Posner, The Future of the Student-Edited Law Review, 47 Stan. L. Rev. 1131 (1995).

Bernard J. Hibbitts, Law Writes? Re-Assessing the Law Review in the Age of Cyberspace, 30 Akron L. Rev. 175 (1996). From the editor of Jurist.

Richard S. Harnsberger, Reflections About Law Reviews and American Legal Scholarship, 76 Neb. L. Rev. 681 (1997).

James W. Harper, Why Student-Run Law Reviews?, 82 Minn. L. Rev. 1261 (1998).

Reinhard Zimmermann, Law Reviews: A Foray Through a Strange World, 47 Emory L.J. 659 (1998).

Nathan H. Saunders, Student-Edited Law Reviews: Reflections and Responses of an Inmate, 49 Duke L.J. 1663 (2000).